1. Field of Invention
My invention relates to the harvesting of soluble organic materials from trees using a pressurized solution system.
2. Background of the Invention
Humans have been utilizing carbohydrates since the dawn of time; our very existence depends on them. It's no surprise then that sugar has hundreds of uses, either directly in human consumption, or indirectly as a substrate for various processes and products. Food, chemicals, fuel, polymers, and so much more, are a direct result of carbohydrate use. Presently, most of the sugar people utilize originates from agricultural activity. Crops are grown and harvested, typically in an annual cycle, throughout the world to supply our need for sugar. The growing demand for carbohydrates over the centuries has caused many innovations in the field of agriculture to increase carbohydrate supply in society. Although the innovations have been great, more innovations are needed to keep up with the world's growing population and sequential demand for carbohydrates.
The main disadvantage with traditional agriculture is that most crops are annual plants; they grow and die every year and must be replanted each growing season. This annual cycle is resource intensive, requiring many materials to plant, maintain, and harvest the crops year after year. If the end goal is a larger sugar supply, then alternatives and supplements to the traditional annual agricultural cycle should be explored. One possible solution to increase sugar supplies is to use perennial plants, crops that live for many seasons. The use of perennial plants would decrease the resources needed to create sugar as the whole plant does not have to be regrown every year; only the fruit is taken, leaving the plant behind for the next growing season. Some plants, such as the apple tree, can live and produce fruit for decades before needing to be replaced. Although perennial plants require fewer resources, their main disadvantage is that harvesting their fruit is normally labor intensive. Since the objective is to keep the plant alive, often the fruit from the plant must be harvested by hand as to not accidently harm the plant with machinery. Thus, one must reduce the labor of the perennial sugar harvest to make the process more economical.
To reduce the labor cost for perennial sugar production, new ideas on utilizing perennial plants may be essential. The research and development for perennial plants is lacking particularly with one of the more productive groups of perennials, trees. Trees are a group of perennial plants that are dynamic photosynthesizers. Trees are normally known for the production of wood; however, a tree's photosynthetic product is similar to that of traditional crops. This sugar, e.g. sucrose, is desirable for utilization. In most trees, these sugars are used by the tree to produce wood rather than a harvestable crop of soluble sugars. Thus, trees are difficult to utilize for sugar production since they so often turn their photosynthate into wood. There are notable exceptions (apples, oranges, etc.), however most trees normally want to grow larger and increase their canopy so they can compete for sunlight; thus, wood production is vital for trees so that they can grow and compete for solar resources.
Trees are highly productive organisms, usually requiring very little inputs and having high outputs. Trees can grow on a piece of land indefinitely with little to no human involvement whatsoever. Trees can also live a very long time. They are in many ways ideal photosynthesizers in their structure, function and longevity. However, very few people have pursued a process to take advantage of a tree's photosynthetic potential by using them as a resource for photosynthate harvest. Instead people normally harvest trees for their wood. Nevertheless, tons of soluble sugar will be produced by a mature forest in a single season; consequently, a potential exists to harvest sugar if there was a technology to extract soluble sugars. The goal would be to harvest those sugars before the tree had a chance to use them for other purposes, such as wood production. If a manual extraction of soluble sugars could be developed, then a tree could be useful for a sugar harvest. Of course, not all of the sugar produced by photosynthesis can be harvested; some sugar is needed for respiration, repair, and the general health and metabolism of the tree. The goal is not to glean all of the sugar from a tree, but rather, to divert some of its photosynthate to a harvestable extract for utilization.
A manual extraction of sugar from trees would be unrelated to the action of harvesting sap from sap producing trees, such as the maple tree. The sap flow, from which sap harvesting occurs, is a natural phenomenon during a very short season in late winter or early spring. During this time, starch reserves from within the tree are broken down to create sap (mostly sucrose), which is delivered to the stems of a tree in preparation of leaf production. With sap harvesting, there is typically enough excess sugar and pressure from within the tree so that one can harvest sap by simply cutting or tapping into a sap producing tree. Cutting the tree allows the sap to flow from the tree. The sap is then usually cooked to produce syrup or sugar. The flow of sap is a natural process; it takes place in a limited geographical area (mostly the Northern United States and Southern Canada) and only for a few weeks each year. Harvesting sap only produces a small amount of soluble sugar from each tree and it only occurs in a few types of hardwood trees.
By contrast, manually extracting sugar from a tree does not rely on storage reserves; the process can glean newly created sugar from photosynthesis. The process would have a large impact for creating soluble sugar from trees since it could operate throughout the whole growing season for the tree, while photosynthesis is occurring. The process would work on many different types of trees, both hardwoods and softwoods. Also, the process would not be confined to a geographical area, but could work in most places where trees already grow. Extraction could occur throughout the majority of the warm months of the year when photosynthetic sugar within the tree is plentiful. By contrast, sap flow is before the warm months, when trees lack leaves and photosynthesis; when no new sugar is being produced. There is to my knowledge no prior art to accomplish harvesting soluble sugars from within a tree before they are consumed by the tree for other uses. This is in large part because the sugars are inaccessible, bound within the tree, protected by tree bark and by the wood itself.